Focusing on Chain Actor Practices to Improve Post-Harvest Product Handling: The Case of the Pineapple Value Chain in South Western Uganda

Deliberate information gathering, and processing influences the decisions and choices agricultural value chain actors make, regarding handling a product from harvest to consumption. Post-harvest product handling usually entails goal-oriented practices meant to manage product flow, and innovations in handling the product to meet consumer demands. Chain actors, being major controllers of the postharvest system and its processes, makes it imperative to focus on that actor as the central controller, whose routine practices greatly direct the establishment, shaping, and maintenance of the post-harvest handling system. A soft systems approach, employing second order cybernetics was used to better understand how chain actors gather, process and utilize relevant information to guide decision making about pineapple postharvest handling in South Western Uganda, when harnessing the chain to accrue more satisfactory economic benefit to the participating chain actors. In SW Uganda the postharvest system was arranged along multiple inter-related activity layers, characterized by actor decision making, goal setting, physical handling of harvested pineapple, reflexive observation of handling practices outcomes, plus rule setting for more purposeful product handling and learning. Handling practices were rooted in chain actors interest, aims, role in the chain and were shaped by the operational context in which the value chain was being operated. If any of these changed, the handling practice, its results and benefits also changed, hence the need to begin with focusing on the chain actor whenever seeking to improve agricultural value chain productivity.